The 1948 Election was the upset of the century. Despite a strong foreign policy record in his 1st term, Harry Truman was not seen as a strong candidate for re-election. It wasn't so much his record that was in dispute rather it was the perception that he was not big enough for the job. The media and the Republicans portrayed him as a failed haberdasher and political hack from Kansas City. He even had difficulty in securing the Democratic nomination. On the domestic front, Truman continued price controls from the war which were highly unpopular; people wanted to spend the money that they had saved during the 2nd World War. Price controls are never a good thing in my opinion. At any rate, inflation was a major issue at the time along with labor strikes which made the Democrats very highly unpopular. To top it all off the Democratic coalition that had re-elected Frankin Delano Roosevelt was at last falling apart. The liberals thought that Truman was being too hard on the Soviets and they also felt that the New Deal was not well represented with Truman (the record shows that he was, but that's another story), so they split off the Democratic ticket to form the Progressive Party, which nominated former Vice President Henry Wallace. Meanwhile the Southerners were mad at Truman for de-segregating the armed forces after the war; he felt that black soldiers who had done their duty deserved their due. So the segregationist southerners split off the Democratic ticket to form the Dixiecrat Party which nominated Governor Strom Thurmond, who was a US Senator up until last year. It was thought by the press that Truman was toast, but that was not so. The President was no political slouch. He realized that he had gotten rid of the leftists and the segregationists from his coalition, so that freed him up to persue the votes of the centrists in the Mid-West and the West Coast. It was thought that Truman had run a hapless campaign, but he had the best reasearch unit assembled that any campaign had put together up until that time. The President ran a hard hitting campaign; targeting in on the Mid-West, the Southwest, the West Coast, and the East Coast. He went as far as to accuse the Republicans of facism. Harry Truman became feisty Give-em-hell Harry and it worked. He traveled the country by whistlestop, he gave speeches to whomever would listen. Meanwhile, the Republican nominee, Governor Thomas Dewey of New York ran a weak campaign, thinking that Truman was certainly going down in defeat. His strategy was to make no harsh accusations in order to ensure that the Democrats don't turn out in high numbers. However, for a sure loser, Truman attracted millions of people at a time. The media considered the Presidential popularity a fluke. Come Election Day, it was proven that it wasn't. Truman won by 2 million votes, or about 50% of the vote against Dewey's 45%. At the end of the day, Republicans stayed at home because they thought that Dewey had it in the bag. But in the final analysis, the Republicans lost because of the Mid-Western farm vote. The Republicans had voted against funding to build extra silo's to store surplus agricultural products. This cost the farmers a lot of money and the Democrats exploited this to the max. Plus that and the economy at the time was experiencing an unprecedented boom. If the economy is strong, the incumbent usually wins re-election. But it all came down to Truman hard-nosed determination as a candidate. He beat all the odds by winning the election against Dewey, who seemed more presidential than Truman. His second term though didn't go on to be a good one, but it proves that you can't trust the polls all the time.